"Leyli and Majnun"
is an immortal love story sometimes compared to "Romeo and
Juliet" though it predates Shakespeare in oral tradition
by more than 1,000 years. Today, it is still one of the most
popular epics of the Middle East and Central Asia among Arabs,
Turks, Persians, Afghans, Tajiks, Kurds, Indians, Pakistanis,
and, of course Azerbaijanis.

The story's influence extends
beyond Eastern tradition. If we go back to the Middle Ages at
the time of the troubadours and crusaders of the 11th-13th centuries,
we discover that much of Western courtly literature can be traced
to Oriental literature which, in turn, has influenced more recent
works such as the 13th century German epic by Gottfried von Strassburg
"Tristan und Isolde," the early 13th century French
fable, "Aucassin et Nicolette," as well as William
Shakespeare works of the 16th century and innumerable others.

The most popular version of this love story "Leyli and Majnun"
was penned by Nizami Ganjavi (1141-1209), who lived and died
in Ganja, an ancient city in Azerbaijan where his shrine stands
today. He wrote in Persian as was the literary custom of the
day though few Persians today grant that Nizami was of Azeri
ethnicity.

Jean-Pierre Guinhut (pronounced
geh-NOO), the French Ambassador to Azerbaijan, is an Orientalist
at heart and a connoisseur of Eastern culture and philosophy.
A polyglot, he is fluent in Azeri, Turkish, Persian, Arabic,
English and French. For the last 30 years, he has both studied
as well as worked in diplomacy in Egypt, Qatar, Iran, Libya and
now Azerbaijan. His extensive experience and knowledge give him
a broad scope that few contemporaries enjoy or can equal.

Publishing such an article as
Guinhut's in Azerbaijan International is rather unusual for us
as it is longer than our usual articles and tends to be more
academic in style. However, we found Guinhut's treatment of the
topic to be extremely valuable. He not only places the poem in
its historical regional context, but also sheds light on its
various philosophical interpretations.

In the process of preparing
this article, the Ambassador supplemented his own reference works
with materials he discovered in Baku's Institute of Manuscripts.
Some of the miniatures featured on these pages are from treasures
found there.

This year, 1998, marks the 90th
Jubilee of the first staging of the opera "Leyli and Majnun"
by Azerbaijani composer Uzeyir Hajibeyov. Its first performance
was staged on January 25, 1908 at the Taghiyev Music Comedy Theater
in Baku. It was the first work ever created in the Italian musical
genre in the Muslim world.

Perhaps, some of you have enjoyed
seeing the enactment of "Leyli and Majnun" at the Opera
and Ballet Theater in Baku a few nights per year and listening
to the talented Alim Gasimov play Majnun. Hajibeyov's version
of the story is an enormously successful synthesis between East
and West, and between European classical music and Oriental culture.

But we ask: What are the origins
of this work? Coming from where? And meaning what? To whom?

Let me share a few observations
and memories about this landmark legend as a former scholar and
amateur with the view of giving those of you who liked the play
or those who may wish to see it, a hint of its Orientalist luster,

Having first read the story
of "Leyli and Majnun" in Arabic (Majnun Leyla), many
years ago, I was delighted to see it on screen some years later
in a popular cinema in the outskirts of Peshawar (Western Pakistan).

Left:
Leyli and Majnun. Courtesy:
Baku's Manuscript Institute.

The movie aptly fit all the
criteria of the sub-continent's film industry: musical, full
of splendor and deeply emotional. When the lovers eventually
met at the end and died from the insanity of their love (amour
fou), the entire audience, composed mainly of Afghani fierce
fighters and Pathan merchants, was sobbing. In fact, the theater
was so emotionally charged that I myself wasn't able to hold
back the tears. The film was in Urdu. The actors were famous
and extremely handsome. And the music - traditional Indian raga
- was celestial.You're
familiar with the question: "If you were deserted on an
island, what dozen books would you want to have with you?"
No doubt I would stuff my luggage not only with that Pakistani
version of the story but also with another book, inspired by
the Leyli-Majnun legend-the French book "Le Fou d'Elsa"
(The Madman of Elsa), the Oriental-inspired French divan published
in 1963 by Louis Aragon (1897-1982), one of Europe's greatest
poets.

Aragon's Leyla in real life
was Elsa Triolet (born Kagan), a pretty Russian immigrant with
an unpredictable, hot temper. Aragon was crazy about her. Influenced
by his great passion, he wrote some of France's most famous verses,
such as: "Un jour, Elsa, J'ai cru te perdre. Cette agonie,
pour moi, n'aura jamais de fin" (Each day, Elsa, I've cried
about losing you. That agony, for me, will never have an end).

"Le Fou d'Elsa" is
a series of poetic reveries set on the eve of the collapse of
the Sultan of Boabdil's Granada by pressure from Catholic King
Ferdinand and Queen Isabella (1492). The themes and topics of
the Bedouin Majnun tradition are revived in these poems and include
the period of peaceful friendship between youth, the sudden and
absolute love that begins with just a glance, the separation
caused by fate brought about by the refusal of the bride's family,
the long wait to see one another and the rare occasions where
the couple actually met.

Another similarity between Aragon's
work and the Oriental traditions of courtly love is that the
poems are intermingled with poetic prose. Many have been deemed
so beautiful that they were set to music.

These are modern versions of
"Leyli and Majnun." But let's examine some of the origins
of the original legend.

The Beginning - the Arab Aura
"Leyli and Majnun" is set in the Golden Age of Mecca's
urban - nomadic aristocracy - a period which is called "Jahiliyah"
(ignorance), and which precedes the Islamic revelation by a century.
At that time love poetry, cast in the framework of Majnun's ill-fated
passion for Leyla, was already one of the most popular themes
of improvisational competitions among Arab poets of the day (6th
century A.D.)

In fact, the competitions were
so revered that seven of the best poems were hung as national
treasures in the place most sacred to Arabia - the Ka'bah, the
shrine in the center of the Great Mosque in Mecca.

Right: Statue to Nizami in the center of Baku.

An elaborate poem by Prince
Imru' al Qays is still taught in Arabic literature classes. It
begins: "Kifa, nabki, min zikra habibin oua manzili, ala
sikkat el'liqua" (My friends, let's stop here and weep,
in remembrance of my beloved, on her traces, here at the edge
of the dune). The scene is dramatic and the reader (or the listener,
as it may be) is at once immersed in an atmosphere of nostalgia
and sorrow. The time for love has passed. The beloved will never
return, and the lover so carefully portrayed in the poem remains
prisoner of his own endless wounded passion, fueled by the evidence
of the missing beauty and memories of happier days gone by. But
he loves this anguished confinement and cannot stop loving it,
sealing an irreversible fate.

The story of Leyli and Majnun
is of the same tradition. Majnun is left at the crossroads between
death and madness. At first he becomes mad and his poetry becomes
his salvation. He survives his sorrow because he is living in
another realm with his mind wandering amidst poetic symbols.
Poetry, in the context of "poesis" of the ancient Greeks,
becomes his "creation." And for this reason, he does
not die out of pain but stokes it alive, renewing it daily.

Trying to ease the pain in the
boy's heart, Majnun's father takes him to a sacred temple to
ask for God's help. However, instead of praying for relief from
his madness, Majnun pleads, "Dear God, for Your own sake
and for the sake of love, let my love grow stronger with each
passing hour. Love is all I have, all I am, and all I ever want
to be!" Without this emotion, Majnun knows his life would
be deprived of all meaning.

Eventually, Majnun retreats
to the wilderness, preferring the company of wild beasts to that
of men. There he communes with the animals and recites his poetry.
He continues to decline and eventually dies, out of madness,
having exhausted all symbolic and psychological desire.

Left: Scene from Hajibeyov's opera, Leyli
and Majnun.

Upon his final meeting with
his beloved, he no longer wishes to live and cannot prevent his
death and so he dies, contented. Leyli dies as well. The conclusion
clearly elaborates the death of the lovers, but not the death
of love. In some versions of the story, it is Leyli who dies
first and then afterwards Majnun. Lying upon her tomb, he passes
away, guarded by his only friends, the wild animals.

So many art miniatures have
been painted depicting this scene from Nizami's lines. They were
especially prevalent between the 15th and 17th centuries, inspired
by the Miniature Schools of Tabriz, Isfahan, Shiraz, Herat and
Bukhara. Today, these paintings can be found in St. Petersburg,
Paris, London and Tehran. At least one such original manuscript
is kept in Baku at the Institute of Manuscripts.

Despite the age of the story,
it still has a profound effect on modern audiences, especially
youth. Why? Always in the past, love had been a matter of privacy.
Union between a couple had been a matter of family diplomacy.
The dilemma still causes trauma today, especially for Eastern
families who have settled in the United States. Consider Southern
California, for example, where 1 million Iranians reside. Many
families have been devastated by the existential contradictions
between Oriental traditions and the impact of the Western sexual
liberation ideology of the 1960s and 70s (See the film: My Beautiful
Laundret). For this reason, even up to the contemporary period,
in most Oriental countries for any youth or lover who has experienced
passionate love the identification or association to Majnun or
Leyli is immediate.

Keep
in mind that the essence of this poetry is still alive enough
to communicate to any gathering of young people a sort of collective
ecstasy, just by listening to this traditional love and court
poetry. The story still affects youth today just as the troubadour
or ashug's song did eight or 10 centuries ago. I myself have
met young Arab lovers who could not face the distress of an impossible
love and ended up dying either by becoming mad or by committing
suicide.

This brings us to consider the
very nature of Majnun as understood through the ages. First,
and foremost, Majnun is a poet and that sets him apart from others.
He is able to create a sanctuary within his soul, from which
he re-creates his love in the poems he recites. Eventually, his
idealized portrait of Leyli differs so much from her real personality
that she ceases to be the object of his love. The gaps between
the pristine purity of Majnun's feelings and the commonness or
"petitesse" of Leyli as an object of his feelings diverges.

Right: Miniature: Majnun in the desert among
the wild animals, Bukhara (1648).

Down through the ages, the Arab,
as well as Turk and Persian, memorialists and moralists have
written about the trappings of poetic psychology which nourishes
its own existence as a substitute for the real experience of
love. In this sense, the emotion of love may be no more than
a pretext for poetic inspiration.

For example in the story when
Leyli wants to express her own feelings of love to Majnun, he
reproaches her: "Do not speak, for you disturb me from my
love for Leyli!" At this point, it is obvious that Majnun
has created an idealized portrait of her that is so completely
different from her real self that she has stopped being the object
of his love.

Certainly, Majnun is not a revolutionary
character. He removes himself from the social order, despite
the fact that he was born into royalty and privilege, and could
have profited from his family's wealth. At first, he remains
in the city and accepts his new status fatalistically as someone
deranged in the eyes of his compatriots. He becomes Majnun (the
word means "mad one," possessed by demons or jinn).
Never-theless, Majnun still expects his friends to stay with
him and deliver his messages and poems to his beloved, but only
under the condition that they will not harm her and her clan.
He seeks no revenge, neither does he revolt. And last, but not
least, Majnun the poet expects his audience to heed his poems
and remember him by reciting his verses to others.

Note the inseparable union between
poetry and music in Arabic, as well as in Persian, Turkic and
Urdu traditions that date back as far as history records. The
inclination of even the simplest people for classical love poetry,
particularly when recited or sung, is obvious.

In Arabic poetic tradition,
the first verses of poems are devoted to love stories - a tradition
which has not changed even up through our modern period. The
word for "poem" is called "qassida" and its
introductory section is the "nassib." By the way, both
words are still in contemporary use in the Azeri language. The
nassib was also used by musicians for its own sake in establishing
the mood in the introduction. Love poetry became the source of
most musical inspiration. To this day, the Orient remains faithful
to its traditions. Traditional musicians transmit their artistic
knowledge from master to disciple. They rarely play music without
singers, and rarely do they sing except classical poetry, mainly
love poems. This is the living reality that connects the north
Moroccan city of Fez to Kashgar, an oasis city in the Uighur
region of western China. Anyone who is interested in this topic
can detect it everywhere. The origin of mugam which Hajibeyov
used in his interpretation of "Leyli and Majnun" is
certainly based on this very ancient tradition.

This provides us with an easy
transition from the Arabs to the Persians, whose immemorial culture
was present in the Arab Jahiliyah period far before Mohammad's
revelation. Even the Koran itself is a monument of poetic and
epic language, even if it warned of the duplicity of poets and
the dangerous fascination of musicians. After the Arab conquest,
Iranian music was forced to become secretive and clandestine,
and music instruments were reduced in size and were performed
only in private circles.

Iran
It is not easy to determine who was really Iranian in the Iranian
quasi-eternal empire. After the Sassanid period (3rd-7th century
A.D.) up to Yazdegerd III [who in 651 was slain because he would
not yield to the invasion of the Arabs], it was the Arabs who
ruled Isfahan, Kashan, Tabriz and Mashad.

The question is: Who won in
the end? I'm convinced both Iran and Islam both did. This may
explain why the same heritage has been interpreted in different
ways between those living in Iran and those from other regions
of the Middle East. But the same thing could be said about other
decisive religious dogmas. It is certainly true about the interpretation
of our legend, "Leyli and Majnun" - Leyli va Majnun
(Azeri) or Majnun Leyla (Arabic), or Lili-o Majnun (Persian).

Iranians may not have been more
religious than Arabs, but they showed an exceptional propensity
in mastering Islamic heritage and theology. As we noted before,
Persians were present and influential in Mecca far before the
time of Prophet Mohammad, of whom Salman-e Pak (Salman, the Pure)
was among the closest friends. He was an Iranian Christian.

In the Iranian tradition, the
character of Majnun has been given the status of a mystical hero.
Simply his philosophy was nothing more than striving to draw
closer to God on the highest level. Human love served as an initiation
to divine love and enabled the believer to reach a level of spirituality,
which would bring a normal human being to the very limits of
mental coherence.

This experience has been described
in the most rational terms, first by Plato (The Banquet, The
Republic), then by Descartes, himself, who states in his Discours
de la Methode, that having reached the limits of reason by practicing
systematic doubt, he found himself suddenly close to mental alienation.
Even the Koran describes the impact of revelation on Prophet
Mohammad's mind, and refers to the accusations of madness directed
to him by Mecca's skeptical society with that most appropriate
word, "majnun."

Another common source of Iranian
poets and scholars during the Golden Age of Oriental Philosophie
des Lumieres (Ichraq of the 12-13th century) is the ancient Greek
philosophical heritage called the Prime Sciences (al-Olum al-Awai'il).
One of the major contributions of Plato to humanity is certainly
the belief that there are several stages to understanding the
nature of man, the world and the divine.

Passionate love (ishg) for the
beauty of a creature gradually brings lovers to the love of all
creatures and the beauty which is vested in them and then to
the love of pure beauty, which is the eternal idea of beauty
itself. In Islamic terms, this means God himself, because nothing
else is eternal and beauty is a part of His Being (al-Jamil).
There is a traditional Muslim saying: "God is beautiful
and likes beauty."

This is one of the pillars of
the Iranian perception of Majnun, who is perceived as a mystic.
Leyla, therefore, is an instrument of God - woman as a way to
God. Women are, like gardens, inseparable from the vision of
Paradise. And the belief in a better life, void of deceit, cannot
be disassociated from the idea of the temporary nature of life
in this world (dunya).

Creatures are not forbidden
to fulfill their material destiny, whose pleasures and afflictions
have to be understood as progressing many steps forward. In this
respect the Islamic scriptures include those very human and modern
words: "God knows that you cannot help thinking of women."

But it is clear for mystics
as well as those who are more inclined with secular concerns
that there is a gradation between the love of creatures and the
love of God himself, the Creator. Those who are called, who are
tempted by God and take the risk of becoming God's friends, know
that God replies and that His love must prevail above everything
else, including human reason. This explains why there are so
many names of God that can be translated as epithets of passionate
love. (See the Middle Ages Scholastic theory about the divine
attributes.) For the mystic, God is loving but He is also jealous
and takes revenge at will. But He also listens and always comes
back to His friends, whose souls must be both satisfied and satisfying.
This sentence has been considered by generations of poets and
mystics as the key words of the revelation: "Ya ayyatuha'l
nafsu'l mutma'inna, irji'i ila rabbika, raziyatan marziya."(Thou,
appeased soul, come back to thy Lord, satisfying and satisfied).

One can understand how and why
such a strong mystical tradition appeared in the Persian society,
after the teachings of Muhyiddin Ibn Arabi ("The greatest
Sheikh") and Abu Yazid al Bastami (died 874), and how the
society has benefited from this providential drama of Majnun,
where Leyli is mainly a reminder of God, and the experience of
an impossible love, the regenerating initiation to a heavenly
future.

Abu Daoud Al-Isfahani, the most
famous Oriental analyst of the psychology of love, explains in
his book (Kitab Ez-Zahra, The Book of the Rose) that the nature
of total love implies that it be kept secret. Once revealed,
it becomes a mere fact of life. Moreover, it is dangerous to
disclose the longings of love because God would be jealous.

A first conclusion against such
a background is that poetic love contradicts, in principle, the
secret of love, which it violates by publishing it in the middle
of the city. Majnun's sin is worse than sexual license because
it violates the secret of love (urbiet orbi).

Herein lies the very reason
why Leyli's family, Leyli's tribe, Leyli's cultural environment
reject Majnun the poet - the mad Majnun. He is no longer a human
being because of this experience. His public disclosure of his
most intimate feelings, which were supposed to be kept secret
(until the negotiated decision of the families to marry their
children as lovers) has led first to the separation of the couple
and the consequential effect on Majnun's reason. But God gives
and takes what He wants, and He may even accelerate the course
of destiny to those who, intentionally behave against Him and
themselves. That is why most interpreters and writers in the
Iranian tradition and the Turkic ones as well, view Majnun as
a pure and absolute martyr of Divine Love. However, such interpretation
is not in the original Arab legend, unless one concludes that
the Mecca episode should thus be viewed when Majnun asks God
to make His love for Leyli irreversible.

Another aspect should be kept
in mind in the frame of the Oriental tradition of courtly love,
which differs from the Occidental one. In Eastern tradition,
the mad love which leads to death and to God, is chaste love.
Many traditionalists in the Muslim world have referred to the
Islamic tradition which states that separated lovers who die
are considered totally purified and go to heaven - platonic idyll.
This is not because of Puritanism; on the contrary, it is because
the death of virgin lovers is viewed as a major scandal that
God would not tolerate without proper retribution against those
who had killed them.

Western tradition in the Middle
Ages is just the opposite. The lovers are not separated and prevented
from being together before consummating their love. Separation
follows because they have realized their love against society's
wishes or against the law. Romeo, Tristan and Lancelot were consumed
by their passion. Their ill-fated life is but the consequence
of their own behavior. They are punished for their love. As Aragon
said on this matter, "En amour, tout interdit." (In
love, everything is forbidden.) That simple statement combines
both Oriental and Western tradition in one sentence.

In the Persian world, the mystic
tradition of Majnun gave birth to innumerable works, mainly in
the form of "gazals," (love poems on the archetype
form of the poet Hafiz) or "akhbar" (recollections
on illustrious persons of the past). This form continued between
the 9th-12th century.

Then comes the period of Nizami.
His influence became so wide and so deep that it has influenced
all the major thinkers and writers in the Persian language after
him. For geographical reasons, we will come back to more discussion
about him in the last section of this article - Azerbaijan.

At about the time of Nizami,
the shape of poetic writing starts to change. It becomes "mathnawi,"
like Rumi's long epic and narrative poems, comprised of independent
verses but characterized by internal rhyme and rhyming of couplets.

After Nizami, the most famous
poet of the Leyli and Majnun narrative was Jami (1414-1492),
a poet of Herat (now Afghanistan) who was initiated into the
Nakshbandi Sufi order. His influence on Ottoman literature was
immense, especially on Ahmad Sinan Beheshti, who also lived in
Herat for awhile. A French translation of his divan was made
in 1805 by Chezy.

Poets writing in Ottoman and
other classical Turkic languages found their inspiration mainly
in the Sufi traditions, in Nizami and Jani, as well as Fuzuli.
Keep in mind two names: Mir Ali Shir Nava'I (known as the Prince
of Poets) and Mohammad Ali Khan (Prince of Khakand) who wrote
in Chagatai (Turkmenistan) and died when he was only 20 years
old in 1842.

Azerbaijan
Azerbaijan's case is unique in several aspects. First of all,
Azerbaijan has always been at the crossroads of Oriental influence.
It is an ancient cultural settlement with a long-standing inclination
for lyric arts. On the other hand, it has absorbed much of the
heritage of Europe which embraces a tolerant and modernistic
attitude towards both religion and culture.

First placed under the authority
of the Caliphates of Damascus, then of Baghdad, with numerous
Arab Amirs, the region that is actually Azerbaijan today enjoyed,
from the beginning, the fresh cultural input brought by the Arab
conquest which was incorporated into an ancient Persian heritage.
From the 5th century B.C., the Persian Empire's northern border
extended to Darband, now in Daghestan. The Seljuk (Turkish) Dynasties
and tribes slowly took over from this rich heritage (11th to
14th century A.D.) and became progressively integrated to the
Turkic languages area, though remaining under Iranian domain
(but, in reality, under uninterrupted Turkish authority) up to
1804 when the Russians took Ganja and to 1823 when the Qajars
of Tehran relinquished their rights on the area that is now known
as northern Azerbaijan and eastern Armenia.

For all these reasons, evidence
of the Leyli and Majnun legend so common to the Muslim world,
is to be found early in Azerbaijan though mainly in the wake
of Persian tradition. The Arab context of the drama was not considered
unusual (its nomadic and aristocratic environment being consolidated
by the Seljuk experience) and the mystical interpretation was
familiar, due to Shi'ite Islam. (Just this summer, Bibi-Heybat's
burial place and mosque which is recognized as a holy site, has
been restored in Baku. Bibi-Heybat is acknowledged as the daughter
of the 7th Imam of Shi'ism). Consequently, Persian education
and Turkic sensitivity both gave rise to the two main streams
of the Majnun cycle: the Persian treatment by Nizami Ganjavi
and the Turkish one by Mohammad Fuzuli.

Nizami's legacy is immense as
one of the strongest artistic and intellectual personalities
of the second half of the 12th century. His works were known
in every part of the Oriental world at that time. His "Khamsa"
(five poems) includes the love story of "Leyli and Majnun."
Nizami was commissioned by the Shirvanshah (Abul-Muzaffar Akhsitan)
in 1188 A.D. to write the story; he completed it in 1197. (The
Shirvanshah ruled Shirvan and Darband. His capital was first
Shemakhi but was moved to Baku from 1234 onwards. The Shirvanshah
Palace can be seen inside the ancient Inner City, Ichari Shahar,
today and still stands as a landmark of architectural elegance).

But Nizami was neither a court
poet nor a politician. He was a humanist who described nature
with fervor, and human passions with sensuality and perception.
He looked at the destiny of mankind with a view to establish
universal justice in this world. His facility with the Persian
language is extremely sophisticated and as difficult to understand
for the average educated reader as is Hafiz' poetry.

The 8,000 lines of verse that
comprise Nizami's poem "Leyli and Majnun" give a very
balanced description of the destiny of the unfortunate lovers,
caught between tragic mysticism and their own true feelings and
attitudes. Nowhere is real life overpowered by supernatural and
cosmic considerations. Every element present in the human soul
is kept alive in Nizami's vision, who never tries to evade these
contradictions.

Fuzuli
The case of Mohammad Fuzuli (1480-1562) is different. He is the
only one of the great poets who left behind him three divan (books
of poems), one in Azeri, another in Persian and the final in
Arabic. Fuzuli was born and died in Baghdad. Somehow he managed
to be on good terms with the officials of three successive governments
- the Akkoyunlu (Saljuk Turkoman tribe), the Safavi (1508) and
the Ottomans (1534).

Fuzuli never hesitated to practice
the art of "madah" (apology) and use poetry at the
service of his high protectors. This was a sort of cultural necessity.
But he was, nonetheless, a major poet of the Azeris and of the
Ottomans (whose literary language was much closer to classical
Azeri than modern Turkish is now). Three centuries after Nizami,
Fuzuli's Leyli and Majnun played for Turkic peoples the same
role as Nizami's had for Persian-speakers.

It was on the basis of Fuzuli's
celebrated poem that Uzeyir Hajibeyov based his opera. Hajibeyov's
great contribution to artistic creation j In Azerbaijan, this
form of music is known as "mugam." The Arabs call it
"maqamat," North Africans say "muashahat"
and in ancient Andalusian, a historical region in Southern Spain,
it is called "maluf." In Turkey, this musical tradition
is called "taksim."

To give the expressed feelings
a wonderfully emotional tempo, the mugam instrumental music is
accompanied by lyrical singing, so common today both in Iran
and Kurdish regions, but which seems to have no equivalent in
Europe, except in the "cante rondo" of the Gitanos
in Spain. In Azerbaijan, mugam is the immemorial tradition of
the western part of the country, the mountainous Karabakh, specifically
Shusha, the wounded heart of the country where male, female and
young boys' voices are equally talented and praised.

Thus, in the genius of Hajibeyov,
music and poetry were reunited as was the practice in the original
Arab poetry. It's just that with Hajibeyov, the larger musical
genre takes the shape of an Italian opera, where the orchestra
gives floor to traditional instruments which accompany the solo
recitatives. This unique blend of symphonic orchestra and mugam
first performed in 1908 effectively amplified the strength of
the dramatic effects of the story.

There are other works inspired
by Leyli and Majnun's legend. In 1947, for example, Gara Garayev
(1918-1982) based a symphonic piece by the same name on Nizami's
model. Though Garayev was considered the best Azerbaijani composer,
the delicacy of this music does not really belong to Oriental
aesthetics, but rather fits with the charm of Gara Garayev's
master, Dmitri Shostakovich.

For
more about Ambassador Guinhut in his role as French Ambassador,
see our Diplomatic Series earlier this year. AI 6.1, Spring 1998.
This article can also be viewed on the Internet at Azerbaijan
International's Web site: http://azer.com. Click on Topics, then
Diplomatic Interviews.

For an eye witness account
of the event, see "Leyli and Majnun" - 90th Jubilee,
The Opera that Shaped the Music of a Nation by Ramazan Khalilov
in AI 5.4, Winter 1997. The new National Music Comedy Theater
is now under construction on the exact location of the original
Taghiyev Theater. It is scheduled to open soon.

Nizami's Voice
The following are some quotes taken from Nizami's immortal poem
"Leyli and Majnun." This prose version has been adapted
by Colin Turner and published by Blake in London, 1970 (ISBN
1-85782-1610).

The future is veiled from our
eyes. The threads of each man's fate extend well beyond the boundaries
of the visible world. Where they lead, we cannot see. Who can
say that today's key will not be tomorrow's lock, or today's
lock not tomorrow's key? (page 3)

Dearest heart, if I had not
given my soul to you, it would have been better to give it up
for good, to lose it forever. I am burning in love's fire; I
am drowning in the tears of my sorrow. . . I am the moth that
flies through the night to flutter around the candle flame. O
invisible candle of my soul, do not torture me as I encircle
you! You have bewitched me, you have robbed me of my sleep, my
reason, my very being. (15)

Time passes, but true love remains.
The life of this world is, for the most part, nothing but a succession
of illusions and deceptions. But true love is real, and the flames
which fuel it burn forever, without beginning or end. (31)

Every breeze that blows

brings your scent to me;

Every bird that sings

calls out your name to me;

Every dream that appears

brings your face to me;

Every glance at your face

has left its trace with me.

I am yours, I am yours,

whether near or far;

Your grief is mine, all mine,

wherever you are. (103)

In the garden, the leaves were
falling like tears. The flowers had cast off their many-colored
summer gowns and donned the somber robes of autumn. The silver
of the jasmine had lost its luster; the rose wept petals as it
mourned the passing of summer; the narcissus bade its companions
farewell and made ready to depart. . . As the garden slowly withered,
so did Layla: her spring was over, made winter by the freezing
finger of Fate, by the icy touch of life's most trying tribulations.
(243)